


The Carnival of Dawn

by Winterling42



Series: Flesh and Blood and Dust [15]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Backstory, F/F, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, love in the Wasteland
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 05:24:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6361216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winterling42/pseuds/Winterling42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Capable and Angharad are as different as East and West. But even in the Vault, it never seemed impossible that they would fall in love with one another. This is how they did it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title from SJ Tucker's song Firebird's Child

Angharad caught her staring, again and again, an expression of intense scrutiny on the other Wife’s long face. Capable had come out of her shell, a little, but she was a quiet person, used to having only Caelai to confide in. At least Angharad had had her mother, for a while, and then Furiosa. Capable was a frightened creature, sure, but mostly she was utterly strange to Angharad.

The first time she met Cheedo, Capable bent down to run soft fingers through black hair, look the girl in the eye and _listen_ to her. Even Angharad could rarely manage that — Cheedo was too much a girl of the Vault, Joe’s creation, for her to be able to stand those stories for long. Capable could listen for hours, Caelai running circles with Jiemba as a tiny puff of a dog, eyes bright and tail wagging.

They ended up with their feet in the pool, Cheedo splashing about lazily while Capable braided her hair, humming a nameless tune while Angharad wondered what on Earth this red-haired Wife was made of. Whatever it was, it was not the stuff of Wretched or of road warriors. It was something… older, more beautiful than she’d thought this world could create.

The first time she’d seen Capable stumble into the Vault, she’d thought _here is someone who can share my pain_ , and about that she’d been right. Though they could not choose which of them would leave that night, they could understand each other’s horror in it. Capable took up the habit of waiting, because it was rare Joe wanted them the whole night. Perhaps he did not trust his Wives to sleep beside him. That thought gave Angharad a bitter satisfaction, though it did not last long.

So they would go by turns, leave the Vault for a time too awful and short to be considered freedom, but when they went back the other would be waiting. Would nod, and understanding, slip away to bed. Until it was Angharad who, bleeding and tired and longing more for Capable’s kindness than the silence of clean water, said, “Wait.” And Capable did.

She came to sit across from Angharad at the water spout, and Angharad sat underneath the clean flow and let herself grow cold. Adara, who was with Angharad always, not spared as she should have been (as they all should have been), only tolerated Angharad’s hand on her neck, washing away spittle and teeth marks and flecks of golden Dust that dripped to the ground and disappeared. For a while they sat silent, the four of them, and Angharad cleaned herself and her daemon. Water was never enough, but it was all they had.

Finally she said, “I don’t think I’ve ever thanked you. For waiting for me.”

“I haven’t thanked you either,” Capable said, shifting closer to her daemon. Caelai lifted one paw, like she wanted to step closer but thought better of it.

“Well, thank you. It means something, that I’m not alone in here.”

“It means something to me, too,” Capable said, very quietly, a hand on her hare’s back, and that was the last they spoke that night.


	2. Chapter 2

They were inevitable, and impossible, and terrifying. From the beginning Angharad was the fire, and Capable the crucible that tempered her heat, turned her into something prophetic. Turned the other Wives, when they came, into sisters. They were utterly different, East and West, the lines drawn between them written in bruises on their skin. Love was not an advantage, in the Wasteland. Love did not look like a golden woman with scars on her face, or one with braids like blood-bright rope across her shoulders.

And yet love they did, though they did not know the words or motions. Their sisters were no help, though the Dag tapped her tattooed fingers against her lips when Toast would have drawn the two out of the loft, Pheona shushing her with a breathless hiss. And Toast would go to sit in a chair opposite their alcoved bedroom, braiding and rebranding her hair while the Dag flipped through books like she wanted to devour them, and her page-turning would cover the quiet murmur of voices from above.

They did not speak about anything big, in those days. Capable told stories of her life as a runner, and Angharad told stories of her mother, and they patched together a deeper picture of each other. They sat close, and leaned their heads together like conspirators, and whispered secrets that meant nothing and everything. Adara and Caelai stood watch by the stairs, the lioness lounging long across the floor, her head on her leg so that she could sit eye to eye with the little hare. And sometimes they also spoke secrets, but such words are not for humans to hear.

And it was a hundred days before they stumbled into each other. They walked, around and around the confines of the Vault, side by side. Because this was what you did when there was a heaviness to your womb, and your limbs did not belong to you, and Angharad would rather be talking to Capable that carving wordless runes into her skin. (At least the Dag’s words had meaning; Angharad was both jealous and not. The Dag, of course, felt the same way, because Angharad’s scars said _bravery_ louder than the ink on her fingers.)

They were walking, pretending that the movement brought them back their bodies, and Capable stumbled. It was smooth stone, so it was her foot that landed wrong, her bone that twisted when the floor failed to give way. And Angharad caught her in the quick, unthinking way of someone who was constantly at war with gravity. It was nothing; fingers dug into arms too hard to be on purpose, faces startled into closeness, breath so soft it could be felt, barely, on the skin.

It was nothing, and then it was something. For a moment, Angharad felt herself pressed against the limits of her skin, like she was about to break through into something greater. She could feel each of Capable’s fingertips around her arms, shifted her hold so that she cradled her more closely, this beautiful person who saw too much, too clearly. Felt, more than saw, Adara step forward to crouch pressed against the backs of her calves, Caelai like a magnet, warping the field of her vision.

Capable folded into her for a moment, was held and did not want to leave. Was safe and did not want to move. Looked and looked and looked like she could never see enough of that face, surprise still fading from it, scars enflamed and red and eyes like wells, like aquifers. Deep enough to drown in.

People had drowned in Gastown, but it hadn’t been water that they drowned in.

“I’m alright,” she said, and pulled her own two feet back under her.

“Okay,” Angharad said, like the word had no meaning, and it took another few moments before she let Capable go.

“Okay.”


	3. Chapter 3

After that, they were both more aware of each other’s bodies and less careful of the space between them. It was a reclamation — they pulled each other up out of the darkness, out of white grasping hands and into a softer daylight. Into love. Into themselves. Shoulders casually pressed together, palms pressed to cheeks, fingers tripping across the back of each other’s necks. It was not that they consciously attempted to exclude their sisters, though it was a form of exclusion. And there was no such thing as privacy in the Vault. It was more like they were a series of concentric circles, expanding outwards like ripples in a pool. And that Angharad and Capable sat together at the center of it, eyes wide and bright and curious.

“I’m just afraid,” Capable said gently, in the time before daylight, when shadows ruled the Wasteland and it was cold in the Vault. “I’m afraid that this is too fragile.” She reached out across the bare inches between them in the bed, traced the bones of Angharad’s hand with her fingertips. Watched goose-bumps pebble across the golden Wife’s skin with a shiver in her heart. “Like glass, Angharad. Shining so bright, but it takes nothing at all to shatter.”

“Capable.” Her name drew her eyes up, though she did not move her hand away. Angharad’s eyes were shining in the dim light of the dawn, her dark face cast in bronze, in metal. “Does anything about what we’ve been through, what we’re _going_ through, make us seem breakable?”

And she waited for Capable’s answer, because she would not have been Angharad if she did not ask hard questions, expecting impossible answers. Capable felt the breath move through her lungs, the blood rushing under her skin. The child kicking just below her breastbone. Oh, they were in a terrible place. But they had not broken under Joe’s weight.

For answer, she leaned forward, watching Angharad’s carven face break into a smile brighter than the sunrise. Capable pulled Angharad’s hand to her heart as their lips met, sighed her agreement into Angharad’s smile. “There is no breaking this,” Angharad said, her voice trembling, her words felt as much as heard. Capable swallowed down their hum and pressed her tongue to Angharad’s lower lip, wishing she could taste fire. Swallow bravery.

“Don’t move,” she whispered. “Don’t let the sun come up.”

Angharad only sighed a laugh, and kissed her again.


End file.
